


fancy meeting you here

by salrokka



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fade Tongue, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:00:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salrokka/pseuds/salrokka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas & Lavellan meeting few months after defeating Corypheus, kissin and stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fancy meeting you here

It was supposed to be routine. Everything in Inquisitor Lavellan’s life had become routine, and not unpleasantly so. She had taken to closing rifts by herself, before that only travelling out with Cassandra, Cole, and Dorian; then only Cassandra and Dorian; then only Dorian. Cole and Cassandra because they were honest (though maybe Cole was a bit too honest), and Dorian because they made each other laugh and in her mind that was the only acceptable alternative to honesty. Only now, months after destroying Corypheus and still cleaning up after his mess, did she find that she could bear, and possibly even begin to enjoy solitude. The last four rifts she had closed had gone as expected. Once you understood demons and their patterns well enough, it became easy to sneak behind them and rip them apart one by one and still walk away with nothing more than a sprained wrist or a small wound.

So when she happened upon this rift, she was momentarily thrown off by the sight of a moss green person-shaped mass on the ground and a Terror towering over it. It took her only a second to shift back into demon-fighting mode. She did not think, but reacted. Grabbing two small daggers from her belt, she whipped them towards the demon and did not pause to watch them sink into its chest and neck, instead rushing towards the looming figure and leaping before it could leap, using the lower knife as a foothold, grabbing the knife lodged in its throat and ripping with gusto—displacing the demon’s head from its body. It fell with a satisfying thud, and the demon’s body shattered into hundreds of small reflective fade bits before she even hit the ground.

Pleased with herself, she turned around and extended a hand to the person lying on the ground. Recognition crossed both of their faces. Her heart sank. She dropped the hand.

Solas stood up and dusted himself off. “I had it handled.”

"Yeah, looked that way." Her heart was pounding and blood rushed up to her face. _Get control of yourself, get control of yourself._ “You always were scared of the Terror demons.”

"Their appearance is…" Solas grunted, but his face did not betray the amount of emotion she imagined her own did. "Unsightly."

Lavellan laughed, still a bundle of nerves, still unable to process what she was feeling. Was it despondence, warmth, longing? She listed off possiblities in her head like a mathematician calculating a particularly difficult problem. The Inquisitor absentmindedly collected her daggers on the ground and fumbled with them before finally slipping them back in their places. The two elves finally looked at each other, having run out of things to do with their hands and bodies that did not involve fully acknowledging the other’s presence.

Solas spoke first. “Forgive me for being forward, but were you following me?”

"Was I…?" Oh, right, that was the word for the emotion she was feeling. Anger. Righteous, pure anger. She stared into his dumb face and felt heat swelling up in her chest. "Let’s take stock of the situation, shall we? Which one of us is the Herald of Andraste? The one with a shiny green anchor on her hand, the only one in all of Thedas who can seal these rifts and restore strength to the veil? The only one with any right to be here at all? And which one of us is the wandering, friendless elven apostate?” She spat the word ‘friendless’ in his face.

There passed an intensely uncomfortable silence between them as they both attempted to process her words. Again, Solas was the first to speak. “Inquisitor…”

"Inquisitor? So formal." She thought for a second she should stop before she said something especially horrible, but it was too late. Vitriol-laced steam fogged up her brain and took control of her voice and body, clouding out any hesitation that was looking for purchase on which to cling. She distanced herself from Solas and leaned up against a tree. The rift pulsed in the background as if it were asking for attention, probably a side show to someone else’s story for the first time in its life. "You know, I should have fallen for Cullen instead. He is handsome enough, brave enough. There’s probably still time, now that I think about it seriously. I mean, I’m at Skyhold all the time, he’s at Skyhold all the time, we work together, we drink together. Cullen has time for me. We could raise a family together. Settle down." She was grinning now. They were about (she calculated) ten feet from each other, but it felt like miles. 

” _That is enough._ ” His voice was painfully low. Again, silence. Solas was glaring now, his face twisted up and his body rigidly straight. Lavellan’s bare face fell. “I… I must leave. To remain any longer would be a mistake neither of us could bear.”

He turned around and began to walk away. Lavellan breathed heavily, trying to suck up enough air to clear out her head, trying to stabilize the beating of her heart before it was too late. “Solas… wait,” Her voice was so small. She hated herself for feeling so small. The last time she had felt like this was…

_The Winter Palace._ She had never felt so distant from her origins before, from her clan, her culture. She had spent an entire day playing with political forces greater than she could even fully realize, clamoring for the approval of human nobility who had derisively called her a savage without knowing, or caring, who she was. What would the Keeper think of her? Her friends? Her heart was aching for the forest, for the aravels and the halla, for the People who had known her since her childhood and allowed her to fall, to take steps backward, to make mistakes. Lavellan was leaning against the railing on the balcony with unfocused eyes and a tight chest when he walked out to join her, asking her for a dance. His hands holding hers felt like home, it felt like solid ground. She thought she might… she could have…

How ironic that he was the one who made her feel like this now. Yes, she hated herself for being so vulnerable, but the idea of allowing questions to go unanswered yet again was enough to propel her forward. The Inquisitor thought that Solas had stopped walking, but her heartbeat was drumming in her ears now too loudly to hear anything else. “Do you ever even think of me?” She stared at the ground. Was that a selfish question?

Unaware of how much time had passed, no longer listening hard for his footsteps, she suddenly felt his hand on her’s again, pulling it up to his chest and laying it there, covering it with his own. “My heart,” His voice was weak, as if his will was fighting against his body, leaving no strength to speak. “Focus.” Lavellan looked up, her eyes meeting his. She saw it—she understood what he wanted her to see. There was a fire inside of him, consuming his being and threatening his own life with its violence, its heat. At the center of it, at the very heart of the fire, was a separate flame. It was green, dense, packed tightly within the larger raging element; this small flame reigned the blaze in, provided it focus. The anchor was splitting open from the energy pouring out of the nearby rift and from what she felt inside of Solas, it tore at and burned her skin. Lavellan gripped his shirt and pulled him closer to her, kissing him. It was messy, desperate, mad. It communicated a thousand unspoken syllables of affection.

"Vhenan." They pulled away from each other, reluctantly.

Lavellan leaned against Solas and spoke into his chest, her voice muffled. “When you are done with… whatever it is you are doing, will you come for me?” Solas placed his hands on the small of her back and pressed her closer, resting his chin on the top of her head.

He smiled (it was small, weak again). “I could ask you the same thing.” She thought she might understand, or at least thought she was closer to understanding. There was so much left for her to do, so much of Thedas needed her. The Inquisition was not finite, it did not have an end in sight. It was the same for Solas.

"It isn’t fair at all," she mumbled. "I’m going to write Andraste a complaint about this."

"Let me know what she says." They did not move for a few minutes. They sucked up the goodness of this moment. The Inquisitor tried to remember everything around her, the feel of the grass, the way the rift’s light pooled on his skin. "Sleep well, Lavellan. It was good to meet you here." She withdrew from him and looked into his face for an answer to the riddle. What did he mean?

——She awoke with a start, sitting up rod-straight in bed. No, no, no, no. No. Skyhold. Her room. She thought for a second, hoped against her own staunch rationality, that he would be downstairs again, like the first time. They would laugh again, she would make a sly comment about fade kissing, his hands would be covered in paint from his murals, he would be there. She sank back under her sheets, feeling the emptiness in her bed was screaming at her.

_I forgot to seal the rift._

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the first fics I ever wrote?? It is kinda indulgent and not one of my favorites.


End file.
